MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHY'S NEW NOVEL.*
IN adopting the autobiographical form for his latest novel, Mr. Justin M'Carthy has not done so rash a thing as most writers do when they undertake an evolution that demands for its success many-sidedness and judgment given to few. A calm sort of love-story, told by the lover, a fine, manly, sensible, observant person, who does not insist at all on his fineness, manliness, sense, and habit of observation, but who shines through the story with the lambency that is one of the author's peculiar gifts, is just what his habitual readers would expect Mr. Justin M'Carthy to execute to perfection. Deeply committed as a politician to a fierce and unscrupulous policy, the Member for Longford is as a novelist one of the mildest of men. A gentler spirit, or a better-balanced mind, we could not point out among the writers of fiction who have any real rank in contemporary literature. He is not in- capable of sadness ; no writer with the poetical vein that runs through all Mr. Justin M'Carthy's novels can be of the jocund sort ; but of morbidity he is entirely guiltless, as, indeed, we may say at once of any affectation whatsoever. His taste is fine, his culture (the word is forced on us, though we hate it) is thorough and "all round," so that he naturally casts his thoughts and fancies into a scholarly and polished form, as pleasant to the ear as good music correctly played, but no "fine" writing ever comes from his pen. He is very capable indeed of mirth, and that of the pleasantest sort; one sees him beaming on the scene and the people before his fancy with spectacles benevolent as those of Mr. Pickwick, but also truly knowledgeable ; surveying them with a quiet humour in which there is no gall and no intolerance ; none of that vindictiveness
• Maid of Athms. By Justin M'Carthy, M.P. London Ohatto and Windt's .
towards the silly majority, that passionate desire for the sum- mary extinction of fools and snobs, which we find among the harder and hotter satirists of society and delineators of men and manners. There is a great deal of live and let live—even for snobs and fools—in the cheerful, or rather the serene, philosophy of Mr. Justin M'Carthy; it is not " chirpiness " —for it is entirely out of his power to be vulgar, and nothing is more distinctly vulgar than "chirpiness "—it is a kind of mildly contemplative why-not-ness, very difficult to de- scribe, but which we think nobody can read his novels without feeling. This benignity in keenness is salient in the present story, related by Kelvin Cleveland, a gentleman of varied experience, who, having sketched out more than one career in life—admirably told—but failed to carry any beyond the sketch, has settled down into that of a special correspondent. Only in love has he been constant, though un- successful, and we make his acquaintance when he is on his way back to Greece,—to the Parthenon, to the Maid of Athens. His companion is a dreadful English boy, Steenie Vale; and they have met, on board the steamer going from Trieste to the Pirieus, a Levantine, one Constantine Margaritas, whom Cleve- land does not like. "Perhaps he is too handsome ; a man has no business to be so handsome as that, at least in that kind of way,—the sentimental young lady's hero." He resembles Byron's Selim and the Corsair; as Cleveland does not like him, he- makes him out to be Steenie's friend. "We both met him,"
says Cleveland, "for the first time at the same moment, and had made the same journey together. Still, it is pleasant to throw the responsibility of a disagreeable acquaint-
anceship off oneself and on somebody else." It is with regard to Steenie Vale, who calls Cleveland "old chappie,"' and is full of the doings of the " Johnnies "—by far the most detestable variety of young man of the last half-century—that Mr. M'Carthy reveals his benignity. Cleveland does not scorn him, snub him, or fling him over a precipice; on the contrary, he sacrifices his own feelings, tastes, and ways to the young fellow, and subsequently does him signal good, although this is how he behaves :—
" Vire were on the steamer's deck, straining our eyes through the darkness. Look here, Steenie, this way. Do you see that light ; that one speck of twinkling light, far away on the left!"—' Why, certainly.'—' That light is,—husli, take breath ; prepare for emo- tion—.'—' All right, old chappie go ahead ; I can bear it.'—'That light is on Salamis.' Even Steenie checked his flood of irreverence. For two whole seconds he remained silent. There was a battle there,' he said, at length ; 'I used to know once, but I have forgotten. The Greeks
licked, didn't they ?' We were on the soil of Greece. Awfully jolly, awfully like Wapping !' Steenie observed, delightedly. Is this Athena? Where's the Coliseum? the what's its name,—Par- thenon I mean This is Athens, ain't it ?'—' Oh! no Athens is miles
off, yet.' After our first visit to the Parthenon, Steenie said nothing in particular disparagement of the place, but he observed that, after all, there was not a great deal for him to see there, inas- much as all the finest things the Acropolis had ever had were now in the British Museum. 'You see everything best at the British Museum, don't you know ?' &mania observed, as we passed the Temple of the Wingless Victory, and came down the marble steps of the Propylaea together. That's a noble sea view, anyhow, Steenie. They haven't that in the British Museum.' — 'No,' Steenie replied, surveying Salamis' and Egina, and Stmium, and the sea with cool, critical eye. 'It's a little like the view from Great Orme's Head, near Liverpool, don't you know ? but not so fine.' It was Steenie's creed that the whole earth could show nothing new to him who was acquainted with London and Liverpool."
This youthful Philistine has so much in common with every- body else in the book that he falls in love with the Maid of Athens, a lovely and enthusiastic English girl named Athena Rosaire, with a wily mother, the drawing of whose character is quite the subtlest thing the author has done : this passion, and Steenie's recovery from it, form amusing episodes.
Of the story of The Maid of Athens there is little to be said, simply because it is an almost perfect piece of workmanship of
a characteristic kind. Its tone is quiet, intimate, marked by the features which we have already alluded to, and the one bit of tragedy near the close of the third volume is led up to and then given with consummate skill. His Maid of Athens is the most interesting girl whom Mr. Justin M'Carthy has drawn for us since his "Fair Saxon," and he has not over- drawn her ; the enthusiasm which warms and lights the picture
is never unhealthy or affected, and the ever-present sense of the dignity of the girl, who espouses the cause of Greece after a fashion which exposes her to many dangers, is a beautiful feature of it. A scholar, a critic, a chronicler of his own time,
like the author, must have had strong temptations to put scholar- ship, analysis, and antiquarianism into his story ; but Mr. Justin
Wealthy, when he is writing a novel, is all novelist; and although this book is adorned with touches which tell of him in those other capacities, they are laid on without cumbrousness ; they do not retard or weight the story. We should like to give our readers several sips from the stream of obser- vation, humour, and narration flowing through these pages ; especially a truly beautiful passage relative to the Parthenon, followed by one which is supremely funny about how travellers take that world's wonder, also the episode of the death of Sarsfield MacMurchad, the young Irishman who perishes by the treachery of Margarites, and dies with a groan of lamen- tation that the blood which he clears away from his wounded breast, and lets drop from his dying hands, "was not shed for Ireland ;" but we cannot do so, our readers must mark these fine touches for themselves. They will not fail to observe the instance of the author's poetic vein which occurs in the account (in the first volume) of Cleveland's absurd duel with Mr. Pollen, one of the " character " actors in the drama. The meeting takes place on the famous plain of Marathon, and Cleveland's mind has been wandering into the past, while the people about have been talking after their fashion ; but he is wounded, and falls,—" The plain was reeling under my feet, and confusing noises were singing in my ears, and then a strange, sweet sense of drowsiness came over me, and I saw neither sea, nor sky, nor Marathon." That the vision was as real as the scene, and faded with it, seems to us a fine idea.
There arc several clever social sketches, types rather than individuals, though we think we could put another name to Lord St. Ives. Lady Lance, who has gushing sympathy with every nationality, is wild to have crema- tion established, and, being a steadfast atheist, holds that with cremation everything is done ; Nellie, her pleasant, happy, lively, fast, but not vulgar daughter, who calls men by their Christian names, says So-and-so is "such a dear," but is as good as gold with it all, and admires the Maid of Athens with rapturousness totally unleavened with jealousy ; the Pollens, the Greek adventurers, the special correspondents (easily-recognised portraits, sketched with benign humour) ; the Clissolds, a fashionable artist and his wife, who have been taken up by " Society," and talk peerage and upper-ranks slang to their humbler acquaintances ; Mrs. Rosaire, and her ingenious way of accounting for marrying Sir Thomas Vale,—these and many others which we cannot particularise, lend the story a fine flavour of actuality. Ma.cMurchad is in reality the gem of the book ; but he will not be the most popular person with all Mr. Justin M'Carthy's readers. He will speak most audibly to those who, also looking at the Greece of King George, Vlachos, and Margarites, "see Marathon."
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